


let her live (let him die)

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Major character death - Freeform, Nightmare Loops, Nightmares, Not Really Character Death, Possibly Pre-6x18, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season 6 Related, Strangulation, Suicidal Intentions, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, but only in the nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 22:32:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14174772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: It was a loop.An endless, merciless loop of nightmares, of death and pain.And in every single nightmare, Oliver Queen killed Felicity Smoak.





	let her live (let him die)

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE HEED THE TRIGGER WARNINGS IN THE TAGS BEFORE READING.
> 
> Ya'll can all blame Bev for this.

Oliver had his hands wrapped around Adrian Chase’s throat and it _felt so good_.

He was wringing the life out of the man who had attempted to tear apart his, cutting off his oxygen so he was gasping, wheezing as he struggled to breathe.

Adrenalin pounded through the archer’s blood.

Satisfaction licked at him as he watched Adrian’s face become paler and paler, as the psychopath’s hands scrambling to try and stop Oliver from choking him to death grew weaker.

Adrian Chase deserved to die, and Oliver was going to kill him.

But then, everything changed.

The dark scenery shifted into his and Felicity’s bedroom.

The man’s frantic gasps become terrified sobbing that wrenched at Oliver’s heart.

Adrian Chase slowly morphed into his wife.

Felicity was dangling, helpless and motionless, from his hands as he pinned her up against the wall and strangled her. She looked shocked, and alarmed, and _scared_. Felicity was scared of him.

He remembered now.

He’d been having a violent nightmare, about Chase. Felicity had attempted to wake him by calling his name from the other side of the bedroom while he’d been writhing around in bed. He’d woken, but his mindset had been all wrong. Instead of seeing his wife, he’d seen Chase. Chase, standing in the corner of the bedroom and leering at him with that creepy smile and his hollow eyes.

He’d reacted.

Slammed Chase up against the wall and began to choke him to death.

But it wasn’t Chase. He’d been hallucinating.

It was Felicity. His wife. The light of his life. His one true love.

He still had his hands closed tightly around her neck.

And then her eyes fluttered shut with one last stuttered inhalation, and she went limp.

“NO!” Oliver shouted in horror, releasing his wife and backing away from her. His hands were shaking, his whole body was shaking, but Felicity… she dropped to the floor, and she didn’t move.

She wasn’t breathing.

He’d murdered her.

* * *

Oliver startled awake with a petrified, unintelligible yell.

It was pitch black and he was lying in bed, completely soaked with cold sweat with all the sheets tangled around his limbs and his pillow practically suffocating him.

Trembling, the nightmare still lingering on the fringes of his mind, the archer freed himself from the sheets and collapsed back onto the bed, tears freely flowing as he cried in relief.

Just a nightmare.

It had just been a nightmare.

His heart was still thrumming far too quickly, but it _hadn’t been real_.

Chase was dead and he wasn’t coming back. He’d killed himself on a boat off the shores of Lian Yu by shooting himself in the head and he _wasn’t coming back_.

Oliver and his family were safe.

Chase was never going to hurt them again.

It was all just a stupid, stupid nightmare, born from the subconsciousness of a tortured, traumatized man suffering from PTSD.

He was fine. Felicity was fine.

_Felicity._

Swallowing heavily, Oliver twisted onto his side and reached over to the other side of the bed, where his wife was situated, curled up on her side as she slept.

He caught Felicity’s wrist and tugged on it gently, hoping to wake her up. If anybody could comfort him after a night terror as awful as that, it was Felicity. A shining beacon of hope and happiness in the darkness.

Felicity didn’t stir.

Her wrist was cold.

“Felicity?” he whispered.

There was no response. Not even a hitch in breathing to signify she could hear him.

She didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

_No. Please, no._

Oliver leaped out of bed and rushed to hit the switch. Light flooded the room.

His wife lay perfectly still, her beautiful blonde hair fanned out behind her with a golden halo, but she was very clearly, unmistakably, dead.

The purple and black bruises splodged across her collarbones and neck in the shape of hands - _his hands_ \- told the whole story.

Oliver fell to his knees and screamed.

* * *

“Oliver, wake up! OLIVER!”

Thrashing his arms and legs vigorously, the archer allowed the firm, yet reassuring voice of his wife to bring him back to the present as he was slowly dragged out of his nightmare. His chest almost collapsing with the effort it took to breathe, Oliver rolled off the bed and framed himself on his hands and knees on the floor as he gagged, trying to throw up but nothing emerging from his stomach.

“Hey! Hey,” Felicity hurried to him from where she was standing in the bathroom doorway across the other side of the bedroom. Settling down on her knees beside him, she brushed her fingertips across his bare back and chest to help ground him. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re here with me in Star City. We’re okay. We’re in our bedroom and William is asleep next door, and we’re _safe_.”

“Oh god,” he moaned, rubbing his hands over his face roughly.

“It was just a nightmare, Oliver, we’re all okay, I promise.”

He could feel the pads of her thumbs tracing his scars. Her mere presence by his side was soothing, and pretty quickly the panic was residing, leaving him exhausted and weary.

“It felt so real,” he murmured.

“That’s because it was real, Oliver.”

That voice.

Oliver froze.

“My beautiful Oliver. You denied yourself the truth for so long, but now you know, don’t you? You know what a monster you are, you _know_ you’re a murderer.”

Oliver raised his eyes from the floor and met Adrian Chase’s chillingly proud gaze.

He was paralyzed with pure fear.

Adrian ran a single, bare finger across the archer’s clavicle and then tipped his chin up so he had to stare directly into the psychopath’s eyes.

“You killed her,” Adrian said, and he sounded _pleased_. “Good boy.”

Oliver _shuddered_.

Smiling, Adrian added, “Not just her.”

Taking a firm grip of his chin, Adrian turned his head so that Oliver was forced to look to the other side of the bed, where not just Felicity lay dead, but also William.

His son was lying on top of his wife. There was a puddle of crimson spreading out in the sheets underneath them. A green-fletched arrow had struck Felicity just beneath her ribs which had caused her to bleed out, and another arrow was sticking out of William’s back, where his heart would be.

Oliver could virtually feel his soul shattering.

“No, it wasn’t me,” he tried to say strongly, but it came out as a sob. “It was _you_.”

“I know you’d like to think that, but it truly wasn’t,” Adrian laughed. “They were already dead when I got here.”

“You’re not here, _you’re dead, you’re not real_.”

“Aren’t I?”

Adrian grabbed his hand and pulled it up so the archer had it splayed across his chest. It was solid, radiating warmth.

“That’s not possible,” Oliver stammered, tears in his eyes. “You’re dead. I saw you kill yourself.”

“Did you?”

“You should be dead.”

“Then maybe you should kill me too,” Adrian said in a sympathetic tone. “Just like you killed your wife and son.”

“This is a nightmare,” Oliver told himself, averting his eyes from the psychopath in front of him. He tried to focus on the floor, or the wall. Anything but the bodies on the bed or Chase. “This isn’t real, this is all a nightmare and I’m going to wake up soon and everything will be fine.”

Adrian chuckled and stroked his hand through the archer’s hair in an almost gentle motion, which triggered Oliver to start trembling again. “Stop lying to yourself, Oliver. It was cute to begin with, but now it’s just sad.”

Gritting his teeth, Oliver jerked his head away from Adrian’s fingers, a spark of defiance flaring in his heart. “Get away from me.”

“What was that?”

“I said _get away from me!_ ”

Oliver lashed out with his fist, aiming for Adrian’s smirking face, but just before he made contact, the man vanished and he was plunged into darkness.

* * *

As soon as the light began to penetrate his eyelids, Oliver surged upwards from his horizontal position in bed, shoving the covers off himself. Felicity, miraculously still alive next to him, stirred for a moment at the disturbance but didn’t wake up, slipping back to sleep.

It was a loop.

An endless, merciless loop of nightmares, of death and pain.

And in every single nightmare, he murdered his wife.

He had to put an end to it.

He would not suffer through another nightmare where he killed his wife or hurt his son, he would _not_ allow the memory of Adrian Chase to haunt him anymore.

Oliver began getting dressed.

There was only one way to end this.

“Oliver?” his wife muttered, shifting minutely as she blinked up him groggily. “What’s going on?”

“Stay in bed,” he told her, his voice clipped.

“Oliver?” She appeared and sounded much more alert now, her voice tinged with concern. “What’s wrong?”

She was moving towards him, her hand outstretched.

“Don’t touch me,” he ordered sharply.

She blinked at him, stunned.

“Get back into bed and stay there,” he said.

“No,” she shook her head. “Something’s wrong. Tell me, Oliver. We can sort it out together. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because if you come near me, you’ll die,” he told her flatly. “Just like you did in all the other nightmare loops.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t come any closer.”

“Oliver, please, you’re scaring me.”

“I should. I’m dangerous.”

“Not to me!”

“Yes, to you.”

“No, you’re _not!_ ”

Felicity lanced out and grabbed his arm, yanking Oliver back towards her as he tried to storm out of the bedroom.

Oliver lashed back at her with a feral snarl, using his shoulder to propel her backward.

He tried to force her back so she fell on the bed.

Of course, she would trip, fall and smash her head on the floor.

Blood poured from the wound in Felicity’s head as she remained unconscious.

Silence fell.

Oliver could barely breathe.

“Wake up,” he whispered to himself. “Please, _please_ wake up.”

Everything faded to white.

* * *

“I love you,” was the first thing Oliver said when he woke up, his voice hushed as he pressed a delicate kiss to his sleeping wife’s lips, then to her forehead and her shoulders. He used a shivering finger to sweep a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “I love you, and I’m sorry, but I can’t let myself kill you.”

“What are you going to do, Oliver?”

The archer squeezed his eyes shut, clambering off the bed. When he turned around and opened his eyes again, Adrian Chase was standing there with a mocking grin.

“You know what,” Oliver replied.

“But that’s so boring,” Adrian sighed, rolling his eyes. “Killing yourself, that’s just _so boring_.”

“It’s what you did.”

“Yes, to explode the island your family and friends were on. I do love a dramatic exit. But just sneaking off, leaving your wife in bed, your son asleep, and shooting yourself? So boring.”

“I don’t want this to be dramatic,” Oliver said. His voice was dead. He didn’t care about anything anymore, except ending this Hell so that Felicity and William could live. “I just want this loop to stop.”

“And you think killing yourself will stop it? Oh, my beautiful Oliver… you’re so naive.”

“Then how do I stop it?”

“You don’t,” Adrian shrugged.

“I have to try.”

Adrian just laughed at him and disappeared.

“Dad?”

Oliver wanted to cry.

William was half hiding behind the bedroom door, his eyes wide and frightened.

“Hi, buddy,” he managed to choke out. “What are you doing up? It’s late.”

“I had a nightmare,” his son answered, slipping out from behind the door to approach the archer. Oliver tried not to stiffen up or flinch when William threw his arms around him for a hug. “You left Felicity and me alone and you…”

He couldn’t resist the urge to smooth down his son’s unruly mop of brown hair. “What?”

“You killed yourself.”

Why?

_Why?_

_WHY?_

_DID THE UNIVERSE HATE HIM THAT MUCH?_

_WHAT DID OLIVER HAVE TO DO TO GET A MOMENT’S PEACE?_

_A MOMENT OF HAPPINESS?_

_A MOMENT WHERE THE SHADOWS WEREN’T LURKING OVER HIM AND HIS FAMILY?_

“It was just a nightmare, bud,” Oliver said, trying to sound reassuring as he embraced William.

“What’s going on?”

Great, now Felicity was awake too. She yawned tiredly but shuffled to the end of the bed, glancing between Oliver and their son. The archer tried not to look at her when he saw her frown in worry when she caught sight of his face.

“I had a nightmare,” William told her.

“Aw, sorry, kid, I know those suck.” Felicity stood and opened her arms up so that William could step into them, hugging her tightly. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Dad… _hurt_ himself in it.”

“Hurt himself?” Felicity echoed. She met Oliver’s gaze. “Well, you don’t need to worry, because your dad would never do that. Would you, Oliver?”

The guilt was eating him alive.

His lungs felt as if they were filled with lead.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

“He didn’t just hurt himself,” William mumbled into Felicity’s shoulder. “He… he hurt you and me too.”

Oh god, was William trying to rip his heart out?

“Oliver would _never_ hurt us,” Felicity informed him. “He loves us way too much. Sure, he’s dangerous as the Green Arrow, but not to us. _Never_ to us.”

He wanted to curl up into a ball and die.

“I know that,” William said, his eyes wet. “I know. It was just… so _real_. And Chase was there… and…”

“I know,” Felicity sighed, yanking him in for another hug. “Some nightmares can seem so real. But that’s all they are. Nightmares. They’re not real at all.”

_That’s all they are._

_Nightmares._

_They’re not real at all._

“It’s just the bad memories and bad thoughts coming to the surface of your mind in your sleep,” Felicity continued. “Right, Oliver?”

“Right,” he responded, dazed.

“Oliver?”

“Dad?”

He blinked, re-focusing on his wife and son. Who were both staring at him, agitated and nervous by his behavior.

_That’s all they are._

_Nightmares._

_They’re not real at all._

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just, um… can one of you pinch me?”

Felicity arched an eyebrow but did as he asked, pinching the skin of the back of his hand between her nails

The pain was biting.

And _real_.

This was real?

But then Adrian... 

Had Oliver hallucinated him?

“Dad? You’re kind of freaking Felicity and I out here,” William said anxiously.

“Sorry,” he shook his head in disbelief. “It’s just… everything’s okay?”

“Do we need to call Dr. Schwartz?” Felicity asked, alarmed.

“No! No, it’s… sorry…” He laughed. This was real. Everything was fine. “I’m fine.”

They were just nightmares.

He would never hurt Felicity. Or William. Chase was dead.

They were all just nightmares, and the loop had ended.

Felicity shot him a weird look, but turned back to William. “It’s really late, you should probably go back to bed and get some sleep. You have school tomorrow, after all.” She kissed him on the crown of his head and shooed him towards the door. “Come on. Let’s go, kid.”

“One sec.” William ducked under her arm and ran up to Oliver, hugging him briefly again. The archer raised his eyes to the ceiling, hoping that his son and wife didn’t see the tears in his eyes as he hugged William back. “Okay, done.” He darted out of the bedroom. “See you in the morning!”

Oliver watched him go, heart swelling in his chest. _Everything was fine._

He didn’t think he’d ever felt more relieved.

“Offer to call Dr. Schwartz is still there,” Felicity murmured, sliding up behind him and propping her chin on his shoulder. The urge to flinch away from contact with his wife no longer existed and Oliver accepted the contact happily, inching his arm around her waist to pull her closer to him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Shaken,” he admitted. “And exhausted. William’s not the only one who suffered from nightmares tonight.”

“You wanna tell me about them?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “I’m… still trying to process them all myself.”

Felicity pursed her lips, but nodded. “We should get some sleep as well then.” 

He exhaled. “Yeah.”

They climbed back into bed together, spooning, so that Felicity’s back pressed up against Oliver’s chest and he could rest his chin on top of her head. In this position, Oliver could feel and hear the thumping of his wife’s heart and it was such a reassurance because it was distinct proof that Felicity was alive and well in his arms.

As the archer finally began to drop off into a more restful sleep, the scent of Felicity’s strawberry shampoo soothing his post-nightmare frayed nerves, he thought for a fleeting second that he saw Adrian sitting on the end of their bed, watching them with that signature smirk of his.

But when he blinked forcefully, Adrian was gone.

Still slightly disturbed by the Hell he’d just been through and the fact that he seemed to be hallucinating Adrian Chase still, Oliver let himself be comforted by his wife’s heartbeat, sinking into the embrace of slumber.

Adrian’s laugh echoed through the apartment as the darkness swept over him.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Twitter: @lexiblackbriar  
> Tumblr: @alexiablackbriar13


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